Republican Senator David Perdue told Yahoo News on Tuesday that Donald Trump’s outsider status has left some “uncertainty” about what he would do if elected — a vulnerability as the brash businessman courts wary voters.

In an interview on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the Georgia Republican also dismissed the anti-Trump insurgency at the gathering on Monday as “a little technical argument,” and shrugged off evidence that Melania Trump’s speech plagiarized an address by first lady Michelle Obama as irrelevant to voters worried about their economic struggles.

Perdue, a stalwart Trump supporter, played down Republican concerns that Trump is having trouble uniting the party.

“We’re going to get over this intra-squad squabbling that we have going on right now and realize that we can actually win this thing in November and change the direction of our country,” he said, adding that he hoped the GOP would be united “coming out of this convention.”

Perdue said Republicans are trying to come to terms with “a power-struggle between somebody who is not from the inside establishment, and now we have a leader who could go to the White House and they haven’t spent time in the system.”

As a result, “there’s an uncertainty around what we will get from a Donald J. Trump presidency,” the senator said.

Perdue dismissed the flap over Melania Trump’s speech, a section of which closely matched Michelle Obama’s address to the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

“I’m not concerned about this potential overlap of language. We’ve all been caught in situations where there’s similarities and so forth,” he said, adding that voters in his home state of Georgia are more likely to worry about their economic situation.

“They’re not concerned about that,” he said, referring to the controversy. “When I go home they’re concerned about their pocketbook they’re struggling to get from payday to payday, they’ve lost a job or they’re working part-time.”

“If we’re going to focus on that as a world,” he continued, “let’s talk about Hillary Clinton being a plagiarist of Obama’s policies,” Perdue said, sticking to the Republican message that electing the former secretary of state would amount to a third term for President Obama.

“I’ve met with a lot of heads of state in the last 18 months as a member of the [Senate] Foreign Relations Committee,” he said. “I can tell you that the single thing that every single person that we talk to — heads of state, now — say, is that ‘we need America to lead again.’”

Georgia Senator David Perdue, who is serving as the honorary chairman of the Georgia delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, was asked about the mood of the Georgia delegation, what he expects at the convention, and what he sees as presumptive nominee Donald Trump’s strong points by C-SPAN’s Steve Scully on Sunday afternoon.

Senator Perdue noted that Georgia is one of 17 states the the Trump campaign has said are very important. He also predicted that Trump will win the Peach State by a wide margin. “Our mission today,” Perdue said, “is that we want to take Georgia out of play. We want to win Georgia early. We want to demonstrate Georgia is not in play so we can divert resources to other states that will have closer elections.”

When asked what he wanted to see as a result of the convention, Senator Perdue said it was important to show the differences between the Trump-Pence ticket and the policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. “I think [Trump and Pence] make a great team to point out the failures of the Obama administration, the failures of a potential Hillary Clinton administration, and then really talk about their vision for the future of America. That’s what people back home want to see.” Perdue stressed that the GOP has the high ground as election day approaches. “The failures of the progressive movement on the working class, the working middle class, and the working poor is profound.” Perdue continued, “If we educate people about that, this election won’t even be close.”

Like Donald Trump, Senator Perdue positioned himself as an outsider during his senate race two years ago. Team Trump recognized that, and used many of the same strategies to defeat Ted Cruz in the primaries. Perdue said that he continues to offer advice to Trump’s campaign. The main piece of advice was to keep talking about how the country needs someone who can take the nation in a different direction, especially in the areas of global security and economic policy.

Speaking about the mood of the Georgia delegation, the senator said he was encouraged. He pointed out that it included two 18 year-olds. “Our delegation is united. We’re going to go to work, and we’re going to make sure we close it out for Donald Trump in Georgia.”

CLEVELAND – The 76 Georgia delegates who arrived in Ohio this week are a mix of unabashed Donald Trump backers, skeptical Republicans wavering over how enthusiastically to support him and a few that won’t vouch for him under any scenario.

Sen. David Perdue wants to make sure they’re all, unequivocally, on the same page. The message he delivered to Trump skeptics at the Georgia delegation’s opening breakfast: “Get over it.”

“We’ve got to take Georgia out of play. We need to throw the hammer down and make sure we drive the early polls so we can help other states, like Pennsylvania and Ohio, that could be in play,” said Perdue. “This guy could win big. And I’ll tell you, if you want to do anything for conservative causes, you need to win big.”

Georgia is one of 17 states Trump’s campaign has targeted as must-wins to preserve his chance of taking the White House. A united front, Perdue said, will prevent Democrat Hillary Clinton’s camp from pouring resources and staff into the state. And Perdue will be among the Trump supporters traveling from delegation-to-delegation to drum up support for the candidate.

Said Perdue:

“We don’t have any drama in the Georgia delegation. We’re here to make sure Donald J. Trump is the next president of the United States. I know what you’re thinking – he wasn’t my first choice. He wasn’t my second choice. But let me remind you: This is not a candidate to be embarrassed about. And let me tell you why: We have an outsider. This isn’t something from the Washington establishment.”

WASHINGTON – On the eve of the GOP national convention in Cleveland, Georgia’s senators, both Republicans, are approaching the party’s coronation of Donald Trump on markedly different trajectories.

Sen. Johnny Isakson is the established two-term insider trying to hold his seat in the face of illness, a well-financed Democratic opponent, a polarizing party flag bearer and political winds that favor outsiders who shake things up.

David Perdue, Georgia’s junior senator, comes to the convention as a rising GOP star whose effusive support of Trump has raised his national profile as an effective surrogate and created buzz about his ambitions.

Heading into Cleveland, Perdue is scheduled to take part in a panel discussion Monday on the national debt and another on foreign policy hosted by the International Republican Institute on Tuesday.

SEN. JOHNNY ISAKSON IS THE ESTABLISHED TWO-TERM INSIDER TRYING TO HOLD HIS SEAT IN THE FACE OF ILLNESS, A WELL-FINANCED DEMOCRATIC OPPONENT, A POLARIZING PARTY FLAG BEARER AND POLITICAL WINDS THAT FAVOR OUTSIDERS WHO SHAKE THINGS UP

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Budget Committee, Perdue has made the debt and global security his two main issues.

“My role at the convention and afterward is to continue to talk about the debt crisis and how it underpins our inability to defend our country and how the global security crisis is a function of our own intransigence here in the United States with this administration,” Perdue said.

With his seat safe until 2020, Perdue’s other job will be to serve as Trump’s biggest supporter in Georgia.

“I think we’ve got a candidate who’s not of the political establishment,” Perdue said. “He knows we’ve got to change the direction of the country, and he can absolutely nail the Democrats for their failures over the last seven years.”

DAVID PERDUE, GEORGIA’S JUNIOR SENATOR, COMES TO THE CONVENTION AS A RISING GOP STAR WHOSE EFFUSIVE SUPPORT OF TRUMP HAS RAISED HIS NATIONAL PROFILE AS AN EFFECTIVE SURROGATE AND CREATED BUZZ ABOUT HIS AMBITIONS.

As for Republican lawmakers who’ve skipped the convention, fearing Trump could be a drag on their campaigns, Perdue said those politicians weren’t listening to their voters.

“What the people back home are telling us – and when I go home I hear the same message; it’s getting louder – is that they are getting fed up with the lack of results in Washington,” Perdue said. Trump “is an outsider. He’s a business guy. And he’s listening to the folks back home.”

“WHAT THE PEOPLE BACK HOME ARE TELLING US – AND WHEN I GO HOME I HEAR THE SAME MESSAGE; IT’S GETTING LOUDER – IS THAT THEY ARE GETTING FED UP WITH THE LACK OF RESULTS IN WASHINGTON. (TRUMP) IS AN OUTSIDER. HE’S A BUSINESS GUY. AND HE’S LISTENING TO THE FOLKS BACK HOME.”

– SEN. DAVID PERDUE, R-GA.

Isakson, who’s facing re-election against Democrat Jim Barksdale and Libertarian candidateAllen Buckley, will have a lower profile at the convention. He’s currently scheduled to speak only at breakfast and lunch events with the Georgia delegation. And he probably won’t be talking much about Trump.

“David’s not up for re-election and I am,” Isakson said of Perdue. “So every moment I have a chance to talk, I need to be talking about my re-election and my race.”

Isakson hasn’t exactly been a shrinking violet when it comes to Trump. He called Trump a “great nominee” and recently co-sponsored Trump’s first fundraiser in Atlanta.

“I’ve met with him twice and I’m doing whatever I can to be of assistance and help him,” Isakson said.

But he’s hardly the Trump booster that Perdue has been.

“I’m not going to skip the convention,” Isakson said. “I’m going to be at the convention and Donald Trump is the nominee of the party so, I mean, it is what it is.”

After recently disclosing his three-year struggle with Parkinson’s disease, Isakson, 70, said his health hadn’t slowed his campaign activities.

Barksdale, a millionaire investment manager with no prior political experience, has positioned himself as an outsider in the race.

He’s hoping to benefit from Trump’s possible drag on Republican congressional candidates, Georgia’s continued influx of Democratic-leaning black and Hispanic voters, and the historic cycle of high Democratic turnout in presidential election years.

With more than $5 million in campaign funds, Isakson said he was confident he could win a third term, despite the current popularity of unconventional candidates like Trump and Barksdale.

“I’m going to work hard to run on my record. I’m proud of my service to the people of the state of Georgia over the last 37 years, and I’m never going to run away from that,” Isakson said.

“I’M GOING TO WORK HARD TO RUN ON MY RECORD. I’M PROUD OF MY SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA OVER THE LAST 37 YEARS, AND I’M NEVER GOING TO RUN AWAY FROM THAT.”

-SEN. JOHNNY ISAKSON, R-GA.

While Perdue didn’t get a coveted convention speaker’s slot, he’ll be counted on to help Trump whenever possible.

It’s a job Perdue seems to relish.

He and Trump are cut from the same political template: successful businessmen with no political experience who decided to test the waters in hopes of making a change. Where Trump has his trademark red “Make America Great Again” cap, Perdue has embraced a faded denim jacket as his signature piece of apparel.

Earlier this week, in a jab at presumed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Perdue, Isakson and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., sponsored legislation that would bar State Department officials from using private servers and email accounts for sensitive and classified information.

As his national profile builds, Perdue faces questions about a possible position in a Trump administration.

“I’m sure there are plenty of people smarter than me that can help the next president, Donald Trump, get his administration going,” Perdue said. “But I’m going to be in there fighting heavily to help change the direction of this country. You can count on that.”

Perdue didn’t rule out a run for higher office, possibly in 2020, when he’s up for re-election. But he said that for now his focus was on the Senate.

“That’s my full-time attention right now,” he said. “I take it very seriously. It’s a sobering responsibility. I’m honored. But I’m also encouraged by the opportunity.”

Despite the rift within the party over Trump, Perdue said he expected those wounds to heal in Cleveland.

“I expect that you’re going to see the Republican Party come out of this convention united and angry from the standpoint, they’re going to be looking to change the direction of this country,” Perdue said.

Some worry that this anger could lead to convention chaos or violence in an open-carry state where pro- and anti-Trump activists have said they’ll be armed at outdoor protests.

“That’s a bunch of stuff the press is whipping up,” Isakson said. “I’m not even going to take the bait and speculate on that. Hopefully it will be a peaceful, good convention. And I think it will be.”

President Obama is on a victory tour touting his economic legacy. He recently told The New York Times that anyone who thinks America is not better off than it was seven years ago is, “not telling the truth.” He also said, “we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.”

For millions of Americans struggling to make it from paycheck to paycheck, that is not their reality. Lofty rhetoric cannot hide that Obama’s economy has failed too many Americans.

The May jobs report shows our economy continues to be weak. Only 38,000 jobs were created, compared to a forecast that predicted 158,000, constituting the worst monthly jobs gain since 2010. The number of Americans working part-time because they cannot find a full-time job rose by almost half a million, now totaling 6.4 million. Nearly half a million more dropped out of the workforce altogether.

Altogether the evidence shows President Obama’s economic legacy is one of missed potential.

During President Obama’s first term, the stimulus, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank were all touted as vehicles to promote growth. All were passed by a Democratic supermajority, without Republican support.

Each of these sweeping policies contained new regulations and massive new spending by the federal government, adding to the national debt. While they were meant to protect middle-class Americans and stimulate the economy, they have demonstrably failed.

In the Federal Reserve’s latest report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households, nearly one out of three adult Americans said they are “finding it difficult to get by” or “just getting by.” That’s roughly 76 million struggling from paycheck to paycheck.

Meanwhile, 22 percent of employed adults indicated that they are either working multiple jobs or doing informal work for pay in addition to their primary job. Some 32.5 percent of middle-class Americans, and 47.4 percent of the working poor, said they would work more hours if they were available.

Perhaps worst of all, 46 percent of all adults said they either could not cover an emergency expense of $400, or would have to resort to selling a personal possession or borrowing money to cover the expense.

At the same time, President Obama has ruled through executive orders and regulatory mandates to create over 20,000 new regulations in the last seven years. The price tag of the regulatory burden to our economy is higher than $2 trillion annually. This is sucking the very life out of our free enterprise system.

Because of the uncertainty coming out of Washington, overreaching regulations, and our archaic tax code, trillions of dollars are not at work in our economy.

The irony of all of this is that President Obama and his fellow Democrats claim to help working women and men in America. But clearly, their progressive agenda has failed the very people they claim to champion.

With four decades of business experience, I understand the frustration of people back home with the lack of results in Washington. In business, when something isn’t working, you acknowledge it and try something else. Instead, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Washington doubled down on these failed policies.

The weight of our debt is underpinning our ability to set the right priorities. If interest rates return to their fifty-year average, taxpayers would be paying almost $1 trillion in interest on the current debt alone.

We must change the direction of our country. To do so, we must honestly acknowledge that President Obama’s economic legacy is one that has failed to create sustained economic growth that lifts all Americans.

We cannot wait any longer to change course. In this moment of crisis, we also have a moment of opportunity.

If we return to the principles that sparked our nation’s economic boom, we can create economic results over the next few decades that could make the last 70 years pale in comparison.

Before he made his first million, before he did business on six continents, and before he became a Fortune 500 CEO, David Perdue got his start picking peaches for about 40 cents an hour while growing up in Macon, Georgia.

There his father taught him always “to add value,” Perdue says while recalling the stifling summer work from his air-conditioned office in Washington, D.C.

“He told me years ago, ‘David, don’t ever worry about the job ahead of you; just take care of the one you’ve got now.’”

And now as the junior U.S. senator from Georgia, Perdue, 66, says the job has changed but the principle remains the same. In the Senate, he’s trying to leverage his private sector expertise to solve the public sector’s financial problems.

After a year and a half in office, the veteran businessman turned freshman senator is confident he can diagnose the ills facing Washington. He’s confident he can add value.

“We owe $19 trillion, we’re in a debt crisis,” Perdue says matter-of-factly in an interview with The Daily Signal. Then after some quick arithmetic, he notes that the national debt combined with future unfunded liabilities amounts to “about a million dollars per household.”

Still, the debt doesn’t worry Perdue as much as the interest liability does. Should those rates rise—and Perdue is confident they will—he predicts the country won’t be able to make the minimum interest payments.

For the past seven years, the Federal Reserve has targeted rates at an artificially low level, around 0.25 percent, in hopes of easing America’s climb out of the subprime downturn. But in December, and for the first time in almost a decade, the Fed raised interest rates a quarter of a point, to 0.5 percent.

In Perdue’s estimation, that uptick amounts to $50 billion annually.

If those rates go higher—and Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen hasindicated already that the Fed soon may increase them—he predicts the country could have another “lost decade” like the 1970s, when interest rates peaked near 20 percent.

But those numbers and that history lesson hasn’t convinced all of Perdue’s colleagues.

Sen. Ed Markey—who sits next to him on the Foreign Relations Committee—in April said the “debt that we have is not actually right now a threat to our country.” The Massachusetts Democrat added there is a “more realistic and honorable way of talking to the American people about it.”

Still, Perdue says he’ll keep raising the alarm because, he insists, the national debt is the biggest threat facing the United States.“This merry-go-round is going [to] stop,” the Georgia businessman warns, “and when it does, we will end up in a very bad place unless we find a way to control it.”

But while he will admit that the challenges are daunting, Perdue won’t say they’re insurmountable.

The son of two schoolteachers, Perdue excelled academically, earning an industrial engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1972 before returning to the university to earn a master’s degree in operations research three years later.

Met with economic stagnation at graduation, Perdue redesigned his engineering education to land a job as a business consultant. That career would take Perdue jet setting around the globe, to live and work in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Paris.

Starting in the late 1990s, Perdue earned a reputation on Wall Street as a turnaround technician when, as CEO of Reebok and Dollar General, he piloted both back from the brink of financial disaster.

He’s certain the United States can do the same.

“The problems that we have here are not that complicated,” Perdue says. “The [discretionary] budget of the United States government is only just a little over a trillion dollars.”

For comparison, he points to retail giant Wal-Mart, which he says runs on about half of that number. “They get their budget done on time, they manage to run a surplus, and they do it without all the drama.”

Ask Perdue what steps he’d take if given control of the nation’s balance books and he seems to come alive:

“If I was coming in as CEO, I’d call all hands on deck, full stop,” he says, straightening up in his chair with sudden energy. Motioning at his staff in the room, he doles out imaginary duties: “You go fix Social Security! You go fix Medicare! Bring me back a solution in a week! Then we will garner all our energy and resources toward those life-threatening issues.”

But the businessman has learned that the Senate lacks the initiative and sense of urgency found in most boardrooms.

In corporate America, Perdue explains, “you’re survival oriented and you’re results oriented.” In the D.C. bubble, he says, there’s “an environment that’s really more process oriented, not so much focused on the results.”

He blames a self-interested political class for using their posts to consolidate their power. Borrowing a line, he wryly jokes of Washington’s political class, “I’ve seen the enemy and it’s us.”

“Democracies have a problem living past a couple hundred years,” Perdue notes, referencing the radical French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre by name. “The situation is that once politicians get elected, they tend to want to get reelected … that drive causes you to give away things.”

To get his colleagues to set aside their own interest and treat the debt seriously, Perdue says he relies on persuasion. With an analytical mind, he regularly rattles off lists of figures about the debt, deficits, and spending to make his case, quipping that he can “bring any cocktail party to its knees with this sort of talk.”

He drops rapid-fire facts left and right: What’s the size of the federal debt? $19 trillion. The 2016 federal deficit? $543 billion. Current unfunded liabilities? More than $100 trillion.

But Perdue doesn’t try to bull-rush other senators with these facts. And he doesn’t have a secret business plan hidden in his briefcase. He insists instead that “the solutions are already out there.” That founding principles such as limited government and individual liberty are the ones that actually work.

And he tries to add value by “facilitating the push to get people to recognize that we’ve got to make tougher decisions.”

Perdue says he believes that doesn’t require the business acumen of a Wall Street executive as much as it does the perspective of an outsider. That’s the role Perdue tries to fill, as “someone who can say, ‘Wait a minute, this is not reasonable. What you’ve gotten used to here [in Washington] is not acceptable back home.’”

To get Washington’s fiscal house in order, Perdue has recommended changing the way the federal government spends money. From his seat on the Senate’s Budget Committee, he has pushed for reform of the 1974 Budget Control Act, a laborious and technical process governing federal spending.

The dysfunctional system has worked only four times in more than 42 years, Perdue points out, noting that the last time was 1994.

“There’s no way that a company could survive being run the way we run things here,” he says.

The committee has begun to re-evaluate the unwieldy process. Just recently, Budget Chairman Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., began circulating a discussion draft of a plan to overhaul the entire budget system.

It’s a small step toward addressing an inefficiency that Perdue regularly rails against. And the Georgia senator argues that much more will need to be done for the United States to avoid an economic catastrophe like the ones plaguing Greece and Italy.

So far, the U.S. has been slow to respond to the threat posed by government spending and debt, he says.

“We’re not always the earliest to know we’re in a crisis,” Perdue says. Still, the businessman remains bullish on the nation’s prospects, explaining, “Americans are the best in world history at dealing with a crisis.”

Until then, Perdue will try to add value by raising alarm.

Editor’s note: Discretionary has been added to, “The [discretionary] budget of the United States government is only just a little over a trillion dollars” for clarification.